


he wanted them so badly

by heavenbows



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Angst, Child Neglect, Depression, Discussion of Abortion, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Postpartum Depression, especially katniss, in which nobody gets therapy and everybody suffers for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 20:43:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2521151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenbows/pseuds/heavenbows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peeta realises, before Jazz is even born, that he should never have pushed Katniss to have children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	he wanted them so badly

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to reflection on the ending of Mockingjay. Warnings for depression, ptsd, and I’m gonna warn for child neglect as well just to be on the safe side, although Katniss isn’t exactly neglectful, per se.
> 
> Also, I haven’t read Mockingjay in a while and don’t have it to hand, so apologies for any details I got wrong.

Peeta realises, before Jazz is even born, that he should never have pushed Katniss to have children.

 

It doesn’t really occur that him that he didn’t  _push_ , per se; just expressed a wistful sort of desire now and then for kids. He loved kids, was good with them, and he’d thought that having a kid might help Katniss. She’d loved Prim so much, shown her little sister a side of her that few other people saw… Maybe, he’d thought, she could find that part of herself again with a child.

 

And… Okay, he  _did_  want kids. When he conjured Katniss’s pregnancy during their second Hunger Games, it had started off as the most likely way to get Katniss to safety, but the best way to tell a lie was to try believing it and, up on the stage, he’d wondered what it would be like if it were true. If he and Katniss were married, if they did have a child on the way; if – madly, impossibly – he could get his way through this intact and go home and…

 

But, again, he rarely mentioned it. Katniss was so… so… It was like she wanted to make something up to him. Oh, she was still  _Katniss_ ; still willing to tell him if he was being an idiot, it wasn’t like she rolled over and showed him her throat – but she tried, in a million small ways, to… Make him happy, he supposed, as if he wasn’t happy enough just with her. Whenever he told her that, she would smile an empty smile and he knew she didn’t believe him. Would never believe him.

 

The war had left scars on them all, but it was as if Katniss had been  _broken_.

 

Then, over time, she seemed to get a bit better. A bit more open, the occasional laugh, almost like the old Katniss was cautiously peeking through the armour of the new Katniss.

 

Fifteen years after the fall of the Capitol, Peeta raised the issue of children and Katniss agreed – too quickly, really, and looking back he felt sick to realise it was just another part of Making Peeta Happy By Pretending To Be Normal. He wanted kids, Katniss knew he wanted kids, and she also knew that having kids would make her look recovered. Back on track.

 

By the time she was four months along with Jasmine, Peeta realised Katniss was backsliding. No smiles; instead, hunched shoulders, slouching, and loose clothing that concealed her growing bump. When Peeta tried to ask what was wrong, she snapped at him and disappeared for hours at a time. So he sat, and he thought, and then he sat Katniss down when he found her and asked her if she wanted to terminate. The idea broke his heart, but he’d rather have Katniss as close to happy and healthy as she could get, rather than a child that was still pretty intangible.

 

Katniss shook her head no and kept saying no, even when he pressed her.

 

“You want this baby,” she said, head down.

 

“But you don’t, do you?” he asked as he took her hands in his own and  _willed_  her to believe he wanted only her happiness, always only that.

 

Katniss pulled her hands away and stood up; looked out of the window and away from him. He could just about make out her reflection in the glass, and the blank look on her face that accompanied a lie, because Katniss was still an absolutely terrible liar.

 

“Of course I do.”

 

He couldn’t think of anything else to do, except keep asking, and then it was too late to use an abortive without risking harming Katniss, and then – then it was over.

 

Or, rather, just beginning.

 

Jasmine, he called her, as Katniss lay there, eyes closed. She might be exhausted, might be under from the pain medication, or she might be willing it all away. If Peeta had to bet, he’d put his money on the latter.

 

He’d asked her if she wanted to call the baby Primrose if it was a girl, but Katniss had gone so silent and unresponsive that he never brought it up again. So… Jasmine. He liked flower names, or – as Katniss had joked once, when she felt in a joking mood –  _flour_  names.

 

He blames himself when Katniss stays… He has to start using the word.  _Depressed_. Traumatised, too. He’s been shying away from that; convinced it would get better, that she was entitled to mourn and grieve and go into herself after everything that had happened, but that she would get better. Now it’s clear that she’s not going to get better. She might never get better.

 

And so Peeta is the one who gets up in the night when Jazz cries; holds her, cuddles her, plays with her… If he could feed her, he’d probably do that, too, and after watching Katniss hold her suckling daughter limply a few to man times, he starts counting the days until it’s safe to put her on baby formula.

 

It’s not that Katniss doesn’t care about Jazz. When he leaves the house and comes back, she’s always clean and full and relatively happy. It’s that she’s so…  _mechanical_  about it. Baby has needs. Fulfil baby’s needs. End of story. There’s no connection there, none of the expected bond of mother-child adoration. Even in District 12, where children were a burden on the household, and might be lost in eleven years anyway, Peeta had seen mothers cooing over their children and clearly loving them.

 

He wonders if he will ever see the Katniss that Prim saw. Maybe that Katniss was  _only_  for Prim.

 

He starts to realise the gravity of his mistakes – his  _idiocy_  – and he promises himself; never again. He will do what he can for Jazz, make sure she grows up as happy as she can, but there won’t be any more. He can’t do that; not to the child, and not to Katniss. His wants – his image of a big family – do not matter. Disappointment – a different life than he imagined – is nothing compared to Katniss shuffling around like a ghost of herself, not forming any real connection with her daughter after a week, a month, a year.

 

Never again, he promises himself, but sex is one thing Katniss takes comfort in, and condoms aren’t infallible, and then it starts all over again.

 

He calls his son Marcus, and wonders if it would have been better for Katniss to go with Gale.


End file.
